“Who knows why,” Ilya said. “There may be some strategic reason, or it may just be an act of malice, a way to deface the enemy’s homeland while keeping their own troops busy supervising the work.” He paused, sighed deeply. “I am more worried about our people. Not everyone who serves on a work detail returns home when the job is done.”
Ksenia crossed herself. “God’s will. But maybe you should go see, Ilya. It may be possible to help someone. Now everybody out of my kitchen except you, Galya. Bread dough can’t wait.”
After the men left—Ilya and the neighbor to witness the destruction, and Filip home to inform his parents—the women worked in silence. Galina sliced vegetables for soup while Ksenia punched down the dough, which had risen nicely, in spite of the meager amount of yeast. She formed it into a loaf of respectable size and covered it with a towel, leaving it to rise once more before baking. “Here, let me finish with the soup. You do some of this mending. You know how I hate to sew,” Ksenia said, pointing to a dilapidated wicker basket, itself so full of holes it was a wonder it could hold anything and still retain its shape.
“It is true, what your father said about love,” she said. She opened a corner cupboard and took out a jar partly filled with barley. “When we were courting—we lived in Kostroma, where his family is from—we would go for walks along the river. Those were terrible times, worse than now, for everyone.” She measured some grain into the palm of her hand.
“After the revolution?” Galina offered. She worked her deft needle around a hole in a pillowcase, joining the threadbare fabric to a bright patch of scrap cloth.
“Yes. I know in school they tell you it was glorious, freedom and brotherhood, work and bread and land for everyone. But it was a nightmare; people were angry, hungry, suspicious of each other, and no government in place with enough experience to restore order.” She stirred the barley into the soup and covered the pot. Silently, she appraised the remaining grain with a calculating eye before returning the jar to its place on the shelf.
Galina went on sewing. Her mother almost never talked about her life. Oh, there were the childhood stories, the virtues of country life lived close to the soil under the blue skies of peace and merchant-class prosperity, stories tinted with nostalgia and prone to the pitfalls of selective memory. This was something different, something precious and personal, an intimacy with her mother she did not want to lose any more than she knew how to handle it. “Which river?” she ventured at last, hoping to keep the narrative going.
“The Volga. That’s what your father called me, ‘my Volga.’ We had nothing to offer each other but the work of our own hands. He said, ‘You are like this river to me, strong and constant and sure, ever flowing through me, dearer than my own blood.’”
“And so you are,” Ilya said, coming in unexpectedly from the front room. “I forgot my cap,” he apologized, smiling.
Galina did not know how to describe the thing that passed in that moment between her father and mother. It was something powerful and tender, silent and primal. She only knew that witnessing it had reduced her to insignificance. She was neither child nor woman, but something becoming, her essence submerged in some vague process she was only beginning to understand.
The wedding took place early one Tuesday morning, in one of the two churches still permitted to remain open. Filip’s father, Vadim, had an urgent meeting at work; he sent his regrets and best wishes. His mother, Zoya, was there, along with Galina’s parents and their neighbor, Nina Mihailovna, who served as witness.
Galina wore a borrowed white suit, wide in the shoulders and long in the skirt, but quite presentable if not exactly chic. Zoya had contributed a diminutive pillbox hat and veil. The bride carried a hastily picked bunch of virginal violets.
Filip was in a dark suit, only a little short in the sleeves, the trousers pressed so carefully that the hem marks hardly showed at all. Borya had insisted his friend wear his lucky green tie, even though Filip had two ties of his own to choose from. “I passed all my exams with this tie on,” Borya said. “It will work for you, too.” This is not schoolwork, Filip wanted to point out, but the difference seemed clear and it was simpler to just wear the tie.
The wedding ceremony was shorter than they used to be. Years ago, in a judicial edict that permitted him to keep his post, the Moscow Patriarch had excised all the prayers for the health and well-being of the imperial family, along with other sections deemed toxic to the Communist state. There were no ceremonial crowns for stalwart groomsmen to hold over the heads of the bridal couple. The crowns, along with every other gold object the church possessed, had been confiscated and melted down for the greater good of the state treasury. Filip and Galina held pencil-thin amber candles, spoke their vows, and exchanged rings: narrow brass bands procured by Vadim as his contribution to the festivities. The choir’s part was sung by a lone nun from the convent at the outskirts of the city, the convent permitted to remain in existence solely because of the excellence of their winemaking.
After the ceremony, there was a party for all the courtyard residents and a handful of the couple’s school friends. Even crusty old Uncle Zhora came, and brought his bandura; he consented to provide music as long as his glass of kvass was never less than half full. Never mind that the drink was of his own making; he had traded a small barrel of the bread beer to Ilya in exchange for a whole pack of German cigarettes. There was meat pie (what kind of meat was a question no one asked), pickled vegetables, beet and potato salad, fresh fruit, and whatever anyone else was able to add to the table. It was, after all, a wedding.
8
MAYBE IF Filip had not been so happy, nothing would have happened.
His married life settled into a succession of contented days. At school, preparing for the tenth grade examinations and the university entrance application to follow, he was as sure of himself as he had ever been.
Galina had no such ambitions. Once married, she had willingly dropped out of school and continued working at Zinaida Grigoryevna’s toy shop. Her earnings made a significant contribution to the household, and her cheerful nature helped lighten the struggle of daily living for everyone in the family. She went about her tasks, sewing, sweeping, cooking, tending the silkworms and the little courtyard garden, humming or singing all the while, filling the house with peace, even if the songs she chose to sing were sad ones.
After school, Filip continued to volunteer with the theater group, sketching backdrops onto both sides of reclaimed cloth for scene changes. Mishka, the black marketeer, had disappeared. There were rumors of capture and execution, of double-dealing between one of the Partisan hideouts in the forest and the Nazi stronghold in town, but no one knew for sure.
A straitlaced woman with a guitar replaced him. Her repertoire was limited to simple tunes, and while she played well enough, she had none of the liveliness Mishka and his accordion provoked by his robust presence. And she had no feeling for comedy at all, only a thin, high voice that could not reach beyond the first few rows of the little hall. Jealous of her art, she refused to play for Galina’s intermission songs. Galina sang without accompaniment, songs of love and betrayal, loss and longing, and people listened; her strong, clear voice filled their eyes with tears and their hearts with joy, in the paradoxical love of suffering that the Russian character is prone to.
Filip usually stood in the wings, listening, often with Borya at his side. Not involved, strictly speaking, with the theater, his friend liked to hang around, sometimes lending a hand with scenery or props.